Unknown and yet well known

Here’s Paul at the end of his life and he doesn’t have any friends. He’s completely abandoned. He’s financially broke.

His friends have forsaken him and he’s standing in front of the Roman government being persecuted, being tried, says Richard Jordan.

You see, he’s not finishing with a $5 million home in the hills with big cars and a big bank account. You say, “What kind of success could he have been?”

Paul says in II Timothy 4: [17] Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.
[18] And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

He’s got the perspective right. My point is, as he’s looking at what’s happening in II Timothy, and he looks back over his ministry, he says, “You know, we went from nobody knowing this message but me to this thing going all over the known world and there being preachers out there preaching this, churches out there teaching this, and making it known.”

There’s a little book called, “The Apostle Paul and the British Isles,” that explains how Paul, as tradition says, came in contact with the royal family of Great Britain and gave the gospel to them.

You remember in Philippians it talks about the people in Caesar’s household heard the gospel? The royals were actually living in Rome at the time Paul was in that prison and they got the gospel and went home with it.

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I don’t doubt that it could be true. That’s how the gospel spreads; you know that.

When he finished II Timothy he said, “It’s all in apostasy. I’m in jail, I’m broke and I don’t have any friends.” It went from nobody knowing the message to him making it known, the whole world knowing it, to him in jail.

What that’s an illustration of is, “My strength in made perfect in your weakness.” II Corinthians 12:9: [9] And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

So how would you expect Paul’s epistles to end? Not like the Book of Revelation where it’s, “Woo-hoo, new heaven and new earth!” You expect to see it end in weakness and the Body of Christ has progressed through 2,000 years in the dispensation of grace as “unknown and yet well known.”

II Corinthians 6: [9] As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed;
[10] As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

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The crucial thing you have to understand is the course of a nation in today's dispensation of grace is determined by the amount of sound doctrine resident in the populace. That’s what determines the strength of the TRUE church; not the institutional, civil religion, but the true church.

We don’t have to be the majority (we never have been) but our spiritual impact is so powerful. Paul says, “As unknown and yet well-known,” and that’s the way we are, but when that’s so diminished we come to the place where there’s no ability to affect the culture.

A basic sociological truth says that within any group of people, large or small, 10% of the people of the organization (institution, movement, religion, cult, body, etc.) thoroughly committed to one idea, can control the whole organization and carry it in the direction of that ideal.

In the business world you hear about the 80-20 rule (80% of your business comes from 20% of the activity), but the rule of social movement is all you have to have is 10% committed to something to control it.

I say that because if you have 10% of the populace that is committed to the truth, you can influence it. By the way, when 10% of the populace becomes Muslim, are they not thoroughly committed to what they do? 

You watch what’s happening in Europe today and you’re just seeing a foretaste. That stuff's all coming here; it will just come in a different form because it hops the pond and all of the Americas have been different.

The things that hold a culture together have long been dissolved here in the United States and now you have a generation of people with no understanding of what our culture is about.

There’s a revisionist kind of idea and even the simple cultural foundations, and the understanding that carries our culture along, is gone and generations have come along who’ve had that educated out of them. Those people are now taking the control reins of culture.

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By II Timothy, Paul had ministered all across Asia into Europe all the way to Rome, planning churches in tremendously diverse cultures, but this is where the reader sees the church move from rule to ruin.

In his parting message to Timothy, Paul writes in II Timothy 4: “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”

Paul tells you what his course is in Acts 20:24 when he writes, “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”

That last part of the verse has always kind of tickled my fancy. You know, when you read Paul’s life, that verse helps you understand it. He lived like he had a suicide mania.

If you look at Acts 14, he goes into a city and they drag him outside of town, stone him and leave him for dead. But he gets right back up and you know what he does? He goes right back into the city. 

You say, “No, wait a minute, what kind of deal is that?!” You check the record; up until that point every time a city rejected Paul he shook the dust off his feet and went on to the next one.

But now here’s one where he goes in, they drag him out, stone him and leave him for dead and God resurrects him. I believe he died and God resurrected him. That’s the experience he talks about in II Corinthians 12.

Paul gets up and says, “You know, I’ve been up there in paradise and seen some things that I can’t even tell people about. It was so wonderful I’d like to go back. I’ll go back into the city and maybe they’ll . . . ”

From then on he lived like he had a suicide mania. He would just go right into the mouths of the lions. In fact, here he talks about being delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

The guy had this concept of holding on loosely to earth. When he says, “Neither count I my life dear to myself,” he didn’t say he didn’t love his family, or that he was trying to die tomorrow. He said, “I’m holding it loose. The most precious things to me are not what I possess here.”

When you talk about persecution, or someone coming along and taking what I’ve got, beating me up, putting me in jail, or being shipwrecked time and time again . . .

Read II Corinthians about all the stuff he went through. They did all that stuff to Paul and you think, “Goodnight, I’d have quit about the second verse!”

But he says, “I’m not just going to finish the job, I’m going to do it WITH JOY.” Those two words changed that verse for me. He’s saying, “I’m not just going to endure, I’ve got a joy in this!”